360 Days a Year: Michel Kripalani's Redesign

So I have a quick favor before we go.

I'm in the middle of my doctoral research and I need some CEOs. Here's the question: is there a point where working more hours actually indicates a worse leader? Nobody's measured it before. I'm measuring it now. So if you're a CEO or president with at least 10 people in the business and 3 direct reports, it takes just a few minutes and your team answers a few anonymous questions. But what you get back is a report comparing how you rate yourself to how your team rates you. That gap is usually the interesting part. The link is scalingcoach.com/study. Again, scalingcoach.com/study. The link's also in the show notes. Help me out now, please.

It's possible to do it twice and do it wrong both times. Let me tell you about Michelle Cripolani and then what finally changed. So this story does have a happy ending. But in the book Busy Is Broken, we look at 2 different ways of building a business: building a business that sucks the life out of you, or building a business with a great life at the same time that actually is more valuable. The common view is that we're sacrificing something in our personal life, but we're doing it to build something. The problem is that time that we spend is actually our lives. And that sacrifice is maybe actually having an impact on the business as well, not just ourselves in our life. Michelle Kripalani is a friend of mine from the EO organization. Some of our listeners, viewers will know him, and you will know some of the story. Michelle ran A couple of businesses. And in fact, he kind of did it the same way even though he had this wake-up call and he took a thing. So, first company he runs for 10, 11 years, video game business. And Michelle is the business and Michelle works 360 days a year, 360 days a year for 10 years plus straight. He totally burns out. He has a meltdown. He takes not quite 2 years off, I believe, and he goes to restore himself. What happens next is not the fix that you'd think. So, before we go on, my name is Bill Gallagher. The book I'm talking about, this solo series is from the book I've written, Busy Is Broken, busyisbroken.com. You can go online wherever you buy this right now and go Order Busy Is Broken. It's about to be— it's about to ship, but go order. You can get the Kindle ebook, iBook, Apple Books, like whatever. You can get it paperback. I think you can get it hardcover. You can get audiobook, like whatever kind you want. Go order it wherever you get your books or go to busyisbroken.com. Claim some of the extras for the pre-launch orders. So you'll find all that. And then this show comes to you every week. We bring a show, either a solo episode like this or an episode with a guest, an author, a guru, somebody, a CEO who grew their company, sharing some of the stories about growing their business. My name's Bill Gallagher. I'm the host of the show. We've done about 700 of these. So like, subscribe, this as well as going to go get the book. So back to Michelle Cripolani. So Michelle Cripolani, He runs the first business, the video game business. He burns out. He takes some time off. He does the yoga, meditation, that kind of thing. Takes time off, clears his head. He comes back with a new company. This is an app company now, Ocean House Media. Things like Dr. Seuss and others, he's going to license them and create that kind of thing. But very quickly, Michelle falls back into the old trap of working 360 days a year, working nonstop on things. Michelle is the company. The company is Michelle.

Right.

So, before you know it, even after having burned out and taken that time off, Michel's doing kind of the same thing again. We do things again and again, some of the same way. He's an intense guy. He's capable. I know you and I are like that as well. We are capable. We are strong. We do things like that more than once. So, that's Michel's story. What happens? Well, he gets back into the same kind of routine, and the first thing that happens Michelle's dad gets sick, and he's going to have heart surgery. And and so Michelle arranges it to get back in time. But Michelle's dad goes into surgery early, and Michelle isn't there for the surgery. Doesn't get back to the afternoon. His dad doesn't make it out of surgery. He misses saying goodbye to his dad. Face to face, holding his hand, seeing him for the last time. He passes. That still doesn't change it. That's a heartbreak, right? It's a heartbreak he carried for a long time and probably still will come back to touch him from time to time. The real change happens when Michel's wife, Karen, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. That is the wake-up call. He's like, stop, time off. So he pulls off, he pulls back significantly with the brain tumor, and they're gonna focus on her treatment and so on. Turns out the brain tumor is benign. It turns out that's a gift. Sometimes a wake-up like that is the gift. That causes him to stop. He realizes he's done this like 24/7 work thing more than once. the 360-day thing. This time he steps back for real. He goes from being an operator with growth as the ultimate goal, like hypergrowth, and what can we do to grow, grow, grow, to being an owner. How do I grow the business? From going from all about the big growth to passive income. How do I develop titles and things like that and run them in a way that gives me like a regular income so that I can have a life? Michelle now focuses on like having great quality of life, doing the kinds of things that he loves to do. During the pandemic, he took time off with the family. They traveled all around the country in a, in a mobile home and made that their retreat. So he completely shifted thanks to those 2 wake-up calls. So he's the dad thing forever. That was the first shot across the bow. Then Than Karen's brain tumor. Thank God it wasn't. Thank God she's still with us and with them. And that he had that. But what a blessing to take that moment and realize it was time for a change. That is the gift. Like, are you going to wait until you have a thing like that till you focus on what you need to do? We have those things and they are a gift when they happen and we, we see the opportunity of them. I had one even with this book. I have been thinking and noodling on this book for some time, but I was letting it kind of drag out. I'm busy, I'm busy too. We are busy people. I'm busy with my coaching, I'm leading workshops and accelerator programs and things like that, and doing the show and that kind of thing. But one of the things I really wanted to do was write this book and I let it drag out. Then I got a call, oh, I have cancer! The doctor said the word cancer and I just freaked out. And over the next Like 2 days before I realized it wasn't gonna kill me cancer. It was very, very, very treatable and survivable. He said, oh, you have cancer. And I realized one of the things that I would really feel missed out on is not having gotten this book out the door. Got me to wake up and to change my habit and write a book that, that I needed, that I benefited from. And I think like we're always in the process of learning and applying the lessons of the So what is it going to take for you? Could you learn from Michelle's story, from Tony's story, from the stories of Thomas, Eddie, Lee, and Rocky? And could you take advantage of those things to make a change in your own life? What is it that you would need to do now to start to shift? And change the things in your life, the way you run the business. The truth is Michelle's business is stronger than ever before. It's a stream of income. They do titles and things that he's really proud of, but he isn't like in it 24/7, 360 days a year. He isn't running 996 like we do in some Asian companies, right? So What is that kind of life you'd live and the business that you'd have, right? Let's have it be great and big, but you run it a whole different way with a different quality of life. And not wait until somebody close to you or you have a life-and-death scare or until you lose someone that you really care about, right? Let's not wait until your kids are grown and the chance to have a great relationship with them is gone. So, that's my invitation to you. How are you running your business today? What would it really need to look like to be proud of it and to do that? What's the shift for you? I hope this is helpful for you. This is the last of this particular story bit from the series. In the next episode in 2 weeks, the book should be out, actually released and shipping to you.

Awesome.

And I'm just going to share with you in the next episode the manifesto from the book. No more stories, just the manifesto. I'll read you the manifesto, which is a declaration of a kind of a life that I'm committed to for myself and for you and the kind of businesses that I want to build, the kind of thing that will make all the difference. I hope that's helpful for you. I hope you take a look in the mirror and think about where are you? Are you running the 360-day-a-year kind of a lifestyle? Or something similar to that that Michelle was running? Or will you take the wake-up call that you've either had in your own life or that you've heard from me and from Michelle before you have that and apply it to your life now? So, hope that's helpful for you. BusyIsBroken.com, Amazon, wherever you get your books, go order it now, get your copy. There's some pre-order incentives, some things we're doing for people before the launch. So go redeem those at the website, busyisbroken.com. Go order yours now. We'll talk to you again next time. In the meantime, keep scaling. Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.